It is an unfortunate fact of
military life that training can often be as deadly as
combat. That is made more tragic when an accident
can be prevented from the outset. Such is the case
with the accidental shoot down of a B-52 Stratofortress by
the New Mexico Air National Guard during 1961.

On April 7
a B-52B took off from Biggs Air Force Base, at El Paso,
Texas on a practice mission. The "BUFF" was given the
serial number 53-0380 when she was built and was christened
the "CiudadJuarez" when she was assigned to
the 95th Bomb Wing at Biggs. That name was in honor of
El Paso's sister city across the Rio Grande. Part of
the mission for the day was to provide a "target" for two
F-100As piloted by 1st Lt.
James W. van Scyoc and Capt.
Dale Dodd of the 188th Fighter
Interceptor Squadron (NMANG) to practice intercepts
on. Little did anyone know how realistic that was to
become.

The two
Huns that were to make passes on the bomber started their
runs at 34,000 feet. As was the common practice in
those days, they each carried GAR-8 Sidewinder
missiles. The Sidewinder has a "heat seeking"
guidance system where the seeker head in the front of the
missile will pick up the infra red signature of another
aircraft and guide the missile to that heat source.
The GAR designation was later changed to AIM-9B.
The AIM-9Bs in use that day were live missiles, but had been
wired in such a way that only the seeker head was supposed
to be active. The two F-100s had made five successful
passes (or intercepts). On the sixth pass the B-52
crew heard the gut wrenching words of Lt. van Scyoc:
"Look out! One of my missiles is loose!" The Sidewinder
flew straight and true and impacted one of the engine
pods on the left wing taking the wing off in the
explosion. Even with the small charge carried by the
missile the bomber was fatally wounded. Capt Donald D.
Blodgett described in the February, 1962 issue of Interceptor
what happened next: "As the B-52 veered sharply to
the left, I applied full right aileron but the aircraft
remained in a left bank. The controls were shaking
so hard I was unable to get my hand on the inter-phone
button to tell the crew to bail out. I let go with
my right hand and hit thealarm bell."
He then continues to describe his ejection and the breakup
of the airplane. Some time after he landed, his tail
gunner found him. Later that day a helicopter rescued
them, but it was two days later before the copilot and crew
chief were located and rescued. Three other crew
members perished in the crash, their bodies still inside the
wreckage.

Over the years, I
have heard two plausible explanations: 1.
Moisture in the cannon plug attaching the Sidewinder to the
aircraft pylon had completed a circuit causing the missile
to launch. and 2: That during construction
of the F-100 a wire bundle in the fuselage had been crimped
causing a short that completed the firing circuit. (In fact, the F-100A was built without Sidewinder
capability. That was only added when the A models went
into ANG service, so the wire bundle explanation is weak.) In either case live missiles became less
common over the years, though at least as recently as the
mid 1980s a U.S. Navy F-14 shot down a German based USAFE
RF-4C in a similar incident. Most practice missions
are now flown with a training round that contains an active
seeker head, but an inert body. The
accident board found that moisture was the cause and most
importantly that Lt. van Scyoc was not at fault.

I have often
wondered if James van Scyoc suffered from the stress that is
often related to an accident beyond one's control. I
hope that he is living a happy successful life and that this
accident has not haunted him. He retired from the Air
National Guard as a Colonel and passed away 6 October, 2014.

A photo of Ciudad Juarez is posted
on the B-52 page. Below is a
shot of four New Mexico ANG F-100As in flight. In 1964
the 188th FIS would replace the A models with C models and
change designations to the 188th TFS. The aircraft in
this picture are in natural metal finishes with black and
yellow "flashes".

This personal
perspective should help to provide a human element to two of
the tragedies that occurred during the B-52 years:

"My
name
is Phil Adimari. I was fascinated to read your accounts
regarding the 95th Bomb Wing; you really did your
research. Since I served with the 95th A&E Maintenance
Squadron from February, 1959 to June, 1962, I have some
first-hand knowledge regarding the two tragic incidents where we
lost B-52s 0380 & 0390 that I thought you might find of
interest.

At
the
time of the accident, we were told that 0390's entire tail
section had sheared off, cutting the tail gunner in half and
turning the aircraft into a missile, headed straight down. The
Aircraft Commander's skill saved the rest of the crew. He
managed to get the aircraft stabilized enough to order a
controlled bailout. Once that was accomplished, he actually
attempted to fly 0390 back to base. The controls went haywire,
so he aimed the bird towards the ocean and bailed out.

You
mentioned
that Manny Mieras, the Crew Chief of 0380, lost both his legs.
As I remember it, he lost one leg, just below the knee.
After he left the hospital pending discharge, Manny himself told
his best friend, Billy Porras (my buddy in A&E), that
the co-pilot ejected before the bailout order was given by
Capt. Blodgett. Manny was standing on the ladder that connects
the cockpit level of the aircraft to the Navigator/Bombardier
level at that moment. As soon as Capt. Obel ejected, it caused a
rapid decompression, which literally sucked Manny off the ladder
and out the co-pilot's ejection hatch. Fortunately, he was
wearing his parachute; even though regulations required all
personnel to wear their 'chute at all times, they were so
uncomfortable that we often would take them off to give our
shoulders and backs a break. Unfortunately,
on his way through the open hatch his leg (I think the
right, but I don't remember) caught one edge of the hatch
and was badly damaged , necessitating the amputation.
Ironically, the rapid decompression probably saved Manny's
life. In a controlled bailout, his egress would have been by
dropping through the hatch openings created be the downward
ejection of the Navigator and Bombardier. The fact that they
were killed where they sat and never ejected might have
left Manny with no way out.

A
couple of anecdotes regarding Manny's sense of
humor you might find interesting: when they found him in
the shed on the mountain, he was sitting at a table playing
Solitaire with a Pinochle deck --so
when his rescuers arrived, he turned to them and said, "I hope
there's three of you, so we can play a decent game of Pinochle!"
When he was released from the hospital, pending a
medical discharge from the Air Force, there was a big
farewell party for him at the NCO Club. When he saw
how everyone seemed to pity him his artificial limb,
he went out on the floor and danced, just to show everyone
that a little thing like a prosthesis wasn't going to slow him
down. If they'd let him, he would have stayed in the service."

*F-100A
53-1662 was later converted to an F-100A-rehab for
Taiwan. The conversion included an F-100D tail and
inflight refueling capability.